Petes2424
Registered User
- Aug 4, 2005
- 8,629
- 3,573
Two things. The termination is something that came out yesterday. So the speculation is, he will go back on waivers, for the purpose of a “Contract termination” today at noon.
As for the taxes, escrow, etc. I’ll give you real numbers. It sometimes floors people when they actually see what gets taken from a player.
To start, there’s a big difference between so-called rich people making money and paying taxes on a payroll, compared to Capital Gains Taxes. NHL players pay payroll taxes.
I can tell you with 100% fact, in the State of Michigan, before agent fees and escrow, take home pay was about 53-55%… Thats the so-called highest tax bracket. That was before any escrow crap. So 45-47% in taxes.
There is no way around this. It’s payroll taxes. Every player pays the same payroll tax. If you make over $250k on a payroll, you pay it.
That’s also before any agent fees, or escrow fees today. Ultimately, after claiming things right in different markets, etc, I was paying 45% in taxes in Michigan.
I remember the first big check I received was for $97,000. I took home $48,771… I have a picture of it. Like many, I called payroll thinking something was wrong. That woke me up to taxes real quick. That was payroll taxes. You can’t get around that.
I will say this though. I used to get pretty hefty tax refunds from the U.S. Feds. If I had to guess, let’s say 2-3% came back. When you make a lot of money though, those are very big checks for a normal person. Let’s even pretend it was 5%… it was no more than that for sure.
Now we’re at 60% take home. 40% tax after tax returns. Agent fees are around 3% today. Now we’re down to 57% take home.. 43% taken…
Escrow has been 17% recently I seen, but it’s usually 10-12%. The dumbest thing the players ever agreed to btw. Let’s say 10% just to make it even and a conservative number. It’s supposed to go down to 6%, but pretty sure that hasn’t happened yet. So let’s be conservative and say 10%.
Now we’re down to 47% take home, and up to 53% taken.
Like I said. There is no accountant coming to save the day. When you make that much money, you don’t get to write too many things off, and I already accounted for that with the 5%.
That is also only for half of the games BTW. You pay taxes in every State, Province and Canada for games played away. Let’s just use Michigan though.
That means, to be very conservative, an NHL player in Michigan is taking home 47% of their salary on a good escrow year.
So they’re absolutely correct. Out of his $1.8 million, he’s taking home $846,000 at best.
